Movement: Sea, Ultramarine and Green; Sky, Cerulean and Grey

Water's surface, blue and aquamarine, merges with a red sun; whitecaps shimmer on the horizon; a bright sky clouds over: this is John Marin's slivered glimpse of a windy seascape, painted toward the end of his long career. Here, patches of color, painted in oil, communicate with the cool transparency of watercolor, the medium Marin had formerly preferred. In the 1930s and '40s, interested in oil's textures, he applied his free brushwork to the new medium and to the seascape, a favorite expressive subject. In the year he made this work, Marin observed: "I'm calling my pictures this year Movements in Paint and not Movements of Boat, Sea or Sky, because in these new paintings, although I use objects, I am representing paint first of all, and not the motif primarily." For years Marin was associated with the avant-garde art circle centered around Alfred Stieglitz's gallery in New York, with artists such as Marsden Hartley and Georgia O'Keeffe.